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Travel Story

Camera in the Pack: Finding Photographic Relief in Asia

snapcj@yahoo.com

I never thought it could be so hard to photograph people while travelling. I guess my misperception of it all has to do with the fact that I had never really travelled off the continent before this last summer, and my camera was usually pointed at rock climbers dangling off of the cliffs of Squamish.

I had been all over North America, and even hopped a plane to Cuba, but it wasn’t until last summer that I took flight with only a backpack in tote to try my hand at travel photography. Unbeknownst to me, capturing the intimate, endearing images of people in far-flung places was to remain a mystery for some time.

About the third week of my trip, while I was in Cambodia, I considered giving up. How did photographers get such intimate images of people, when the locals most often ran for cover or shoo’ed me away the moment my camera came out? Of course, looking back, I guess it made sense – my huge contraption of black metal and polished glass was pretty intimidating. And on top of the challenge of not freaking people out, I didn’t want to offend anyone. Despite the zooming capacity of my big lens, I didn’t want to just take and not give back, in whatever small way that might be.

A month later, I discovered a trick. In China, on a trek between villages perched high up in the rice-terraced mountainsides southeast of Longsheng, in Guangxi Province, I had an instructive chance encounter. Coming down from a forested pass into a small grouping of homes, I immediately spied two Zhuang minority youngsters, brothers probably, playing beside what was likely their home.

Their father — I’m guessing — was a stone’s throw away in a small plot of rice, turning the soil. After the kids saw the lou wei (foreigner) approaching, they immediately pulled down their pants, and danced and giggled. Their father, embarrassed I suppose, yelled something their way in a rapid and serious, yet half-chuckling tone. The kids replaced their clothes, but continued to laugh, even started to fall over in their humour.

My attempts in Mandarin at "hellos," "my name is…" and "I’m from Canada" etc. only managed to bump up their amusement. And yet whenever I stopped, their giggles slowed and their eyes cleared — they were waiting for my next move so they could howl even more. This went on for some time, 20 minutes perhaps, during which I remembered I had some cinnamon gum. After a moment’s hesitation, they popped the sticks of gum into their mouths, and began chewing. Laughing stopped momentarily when the supercharged flavour of the gum hit their sensitive gums and their eyes grew to twice their normal size, but after a few chews each, they were back on track. At this point, I unveiled a new item for them to explore — a big, fancy looking piece of high-tech wizardry.

Taking the lens cap off, and zooming the wide-angle lens out fully, I looked through the camera towards them for a moment, and then turned it around for them to see. After a quick spy through the camera, one boy was on the ground, holding his belly in a shaking laugh. The other was teary one moment and then eager to look through the camera the next. Father, at this point, was content to lean against his hoe from afar and watch his kids interact with this lou wei . Me? I loved it — one of the first times on my trip where I really felt like I was having a ‘genuine travel moment,’ just like my guidebook promised. Of course, I started turning the camera on the kids more and more, and pressing the shutter release again and again.

And when things work, why change tactics? I had a second chance to test my strategy while visiting Zhongdian with my sister and parents.

Zhongdian is a dusty and growing town on the border of Tibet and China’s Yunnan Province. Dirt roads zig-zag through town, flanked almost ubiquitously by bland, modern Chinese storefronts. On side streets, and especially in "old town," one can find both young and old Tibetan women wrapped in bright pink shawls, down vests, and long skirts mingling in doorways. Nearly everywhere, black exhaust bellows from racing taxis and honking buses. This is the scene of old China and new intertwined. But as with the rolling and misty hills overlooking town, one of Zhongdian’s saving graces is the preponderance of Tibetan kids with their indelible red cheeks — as photogenic a people as any around the world.

After a jaunt along the hilltops one day – a decidedly abnormal activity for visitors around here – we walked through an outlying collection of gargantuan, timber-framed Tibetan homes, the odd gaggle of geese, and a not-so-odd wandering pig. Rounding a bend and dodging a particularly large soft spot in the quagmire-like cart path, we came upon a few boys, with a look on their faces as curious as ours.

Like a cry to battle, my sister hollered my name and sprung into action with apples in hand. She, too, had begun to delight in these personal interactions.

For me, the key was all in the kneel-down. I knew enough to recognize that photographing kids demanded playing on their own terms, height and demeanour and all. With camera out, film loaded, and trigger finger at the ready, I was good to go. Four incredibly smiley kids as inquisitive as I — what could go wrong?

Not much did, the film fluttered past my shutter in a short burst of shooting. But what I didn’t expect was a particularly adept pair of jabbing fingers extending with rapid-fire speed toward the glass of my lens. Not just curious, one of these kids — Big Cheeks I call him — wanted to get up real close and personal.

If you’ve ever looked through a wide angle lens at action just in front of a camera, you know that things start to get big - real big — when they get close to the lens! Big Cheek’s penchant for tactile relief was daunting to dodge. Fortunately, the smudges he made were of little consequence.

Over perhaps half an hour I shared the view of the camera, amusing these little guys with a visual perspective that they might not ever get again. It was a rare and perhaps incomparable interaction with others of another time and place. In 30 minutes, I got the whole Lonely Planet guidebook experience, 400 pages’ worth, maybe more.

Now, over top my light table with magnifying glass in hand, staring into the eyes of these kids takes me away. I gaze through the film on the bright table and I am crunched down once again with Big Cheeks, letting he and his friends pass around one of my most expensive and cherished belongings. We converse in equal parts Tibetan, English, laughs, and smiles.

Capturing images of people of other cultures is not a mystery. I’ve learned that while their clothes and language and diet are often-times very different from ours, the same things make them tick — respect, humour, and sharing.